NEW YORK — General Motors Co. on Monday pitched its initial public offering to investors, presenting the automaker as a way to buy into a recovery in the U.S. economy and providing new detail of its profit outlook, The Wall Street Journal reported.

GM executives reiterated statements from last week that the company expects to deliver $11 billion to $13 billion in annual pretax profit within the next few years, and produce profit margins of between 7 percent and 8 percent of sales.

But on Monday, under questioning from potential investors at a Manhattan gathering, GM said about $2 billion of the annual profit would come from gains generated by its pension fund, not from auto operations, according to people who attended the event.

In the past, when GM was losing money, it was unable to claim pension-fund gains as income, but is now able to do so, according to people familiar with the situation. The change is related to the "fresh start" accounting rules that were applied to GM's balance sheet after bankruptcy reorganization.

The fresh-start rules also mean that GM could have greater charges to earnings for depreciation and amortization.

Chief Executive Daniel Akerson and a team of executives, including Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and Treasurer Dan Ammann, made presentations before an audience of several hundred major investors at a private dining hall in Manhattan. The gathering was part of the company's "road show" to promote its IPO.

The investors included representatives from large institutions and small hedge funds. J.P. Morgan Chase Co. Vice Chairman James B. Lee Jr. and Paul Taubman, co-president of institutional securities for Morgan Stanley, attended, these people said. Both brokerage houses are among GM's lead underwriters.

In the presentation, Liddell said GM doesn't expect to issue any new debt as part of its strategy to keep the company deleveraged after wiping out billions of dollars in obligations in Chapter 11.

Akerson and other executives declined to speak to the media as they entered the building, and reporters were barred from the roughly hour-long lunch. The company will make similar presentations in Boston and San Francisco as well and hold individual sessions with big investors in other U.S. and European cities.

GM is proposing a share price range for its IPO of between $26 and $29 after a three-way stock split, and is positioning itself as a potentially better investment than Ford Motor Co. because it believes it can earn considerably more.

The company currently plans to price the IPO on Nov. 17 and begin selling shares the next day, people familiar with the plans told the paper.